Sucks big time. I just polled the latest available update from the 27th, but I guess that’s it then. Will look into preparing my own packages, if I’m successful I will try to host them on github or something and share the link.

Woah, I never knew Hypatia is part of the Divest team. Here I thought I was unaffected by the shutdown… I wonder if they’ll keep the av updates coming, since they are provided by ClamAV.

Edit: Looks like the script that converts clamav to hypatia compatible packages is public, I’m tempted to run it myself and host the files on my own server. That way I can just set the database override link within the app to my domain and done.

https://codeberg.org/divested-mobile/hypatia/src/branch/stable/scripts/Main.java

Fennec or Icefox.

Anything good you can recommend? Haven’t seen much good since Witcher 3… And before that, maybe Gothic 2 or Oblivion.

Rubbish, the superuser app will prompt you if an app asks for permissions, and you need to grant it manually. The warning message is distinctively different from regular popups, and there is a 5 second cooldown timer before you can click it, to make sure it’s not happening accidentally.

You can bypass this crap, but you’ll need to root your phone to achieve that.

Afterwards you’ll need to install magisk (superuser app) and a bunch of plugins: play integrity fix and playcurl_next (to simulate that your phone is unrooted), and then FlagSecurePatcher (which is the actual module that’s overriding the screenshot block.

I don’t know anybody buying those crappy carrier deals, to be honest. They had a place and time in the early 2000s, but beyond that they seemed to die out mostly. Maybe still a thing in the US, no idea.

I never buy phones from carriers, always directly from manufacturers, so no idea. Manufacturer bloat can be deleted pretty straightforward.

My primary use case was magisk to enable taking screenshots from otherwise protected apps. Was living in China for almost 7 years, and even though I speak it quite alright, reading is a whole other level. And there are quite a few apps there that I had to use on a regular basis that had this damned flag_secure enabled so I couldn’t otherwise take screenshots to run them through a translation app.

The second one was system level adblock, since the alternative is for adblockers to install themselves as local VPNs routing traffic to 127.0.0.1; however being in China meant I actually had to use a real VPN to access the free internet, and I certainly didn’t want to choose between ads or privacy. The latter still applies; I’m using a VPN on most days.

Lastly, being able to use magisk also gives me access to some advanced security apps such as Hibernator (freezes apps, meaning they are basically uninstalled and reactivated on press, so they can’t use data, don’t get updated etc.), Storage Isolation (lets you configure on a per-app basis which folders it might access), App Ops (advanced permission management, which also includes an ignore function that acts like as if a certain permission was granted, but would feed random data or zeros to the app).

Being able to uninstall everything including system apps is also nice, though that can still be achieved with adb. Browsing root folders when looking for specific data is also nice, but I used that twice in about 5 years, so it’s probably not essential.

Luckily most devices work perfectly fine without internet. And I get the convenience of being able to switch on the heating or lower the window blinds and stuff from the office before leaving so that it’s nice at home, but we did that back in the 90s with a simple timer.

Same for my dishwasher. I don’t even understand why that thing asked for a wifi connection in the first place, it’s not like I can remotely unload it or anything. And a notification is perfectly useless when I can just check my watch…

With playcurl next I didn’t experience any issues yet, it’s polling a new device fingerprint every couple minutes to make sure your device never ends up on a blocklist, and you can trigger this manually in the magisk app as well.

Can’t guarantee it’s never going to be blocked if Google changes the algorithm, but that would just mean they have to adjust the fingerprinting as well.

Nah you can easily bypass play integrity on a rooted phone, see my comment above.

https://infosec.pub/comment/13265730

With a rooted phone you can install Zygisk (magisk + zygote) and then a bunch of modules that simulate system integrity.

What you need are “play integrity fix” and “playcurl_NEXT”.

The first module lets you bypass the google play integrity check, the second one will download updated integrity fingerprint files every 5 minutes to ensure that the bypass never fails.

If you know how to install custom ROMs, this part is not a big challenge.

Just keep it offline and get yourself a Nvidia shield as a multimedia station. They are excellent.

Wait a second, iOS is chock full of garbage that you can’t uninstall whatsoever. At least on Android you have a chance to get rid of everything.

The signup process for mastodon sucks massively. Unless you’re nerdy enough to sort it out, you’ll give up then and there. Bluesky is very straightforward, while offering customization to those looking for a non-mainstream experience.

Same for Lemmy tbh.

The OG Doom is fairly linear, unless you play on the lowest difficulty level where all doors are permanently open. Else you need to kill specific enemies that can only be found in certain rooms to get keys.

I never used any ranged weapon in the game, did I miss out?

Sounds more like you never dealt with them. I’m German, we still got plenty of ideologically challenged individuals in country, and they are not stupid.

No idea what a glowie is, but those trump worshiping clowns you got in the US aren’t the people I’m worried about. Over here there is no discernible education gap between left and right wing.

There’s an app called Cheq, which is a means for foreigners to buy stuff in India using their QR payment system, that’s normally restricted for citizens only.

Follow the link on https://cheq.money to the correct version for your phone, there are a bunch of other apps and service providers piggybacking off of the name.

They’ll charge you a sign-on fee of 999 Rupees (about 10 bucks), I’d suggest you use a virtual credit card from wise.com or something for that. I inherently distrust random online shops in third world countries. Once you’ve done that, they ask for your location to perform an in-person ID verification to make sure you actually live in India.

That’s the point where you choose a random location out in the sticks. Say Lemru town in Chhattisgarh State or something - you might try a few until you find something where they show you a local account manager but no physical shop to perform the activation. That part is key.

Contact the account manager via whatsapp (can be registered with your regular phone number, the service is aimed at tourists and foreign residents alike). Normally they are supposed to come visit you, but they can’t be bothered to drive 3h to see you, especially if you press it a bit and call it urgent. Eventually they’ll just ask to send a passport copy directly to them, and they’ll activate it remotely.

You can then use a VPN to set your play store (should work for Apple store as well) country to India, enter a random address there, select “UPI” as payment method, and open the Cheq app when prompted. After a couple hours you’ll get an email that your play store country has been changed, and from then on you can use Cheq to buy stuff for cheap. Top up the balance with virtual cards whenever needed, you can’t use non-indian credit cards directly in google play. You can however buy gift cards on amazon.in with them, have the code send to yourself and redeem it, that works without problems.

Yeah but that doesn’t mean they need to enforce US laws in other jurisdictions where it means fuck all.

Prices are less than 10% of what they are in the US.

I doubt that’s the real reason. There are enough smart people on top who could set up and run a self-hosted solution.

It’s easy to attribute nazis with a lack of intelligence due to their stupid and narrow minded beliefs, but we should never underestimate them.

I’d wager that the average fascist is just as much a “follower” as the average antifa sympathizer.

On top of that: Setting up and hosting a platform exposes the system to a single point of failure, whereas using existing third party infrastructure means that they have a “legit” operation as well, so the risk of a total shutdown is probably lower. Plus, there is a higher chance external security researchers/auditors will investigate the platform and point out vulnerabilities.

Google has removed it across all regions. My play store is set to India, and they pulled it here as well. That’s something of a global coup.

You can’t patent certain game mechanics. Would have to be an actual piece of code that was replicated.

I haven’t noticed that behavior in years. Usually I wake up in the morning, see the “new update” notification, check if there’s anything I don’t want updated, or else click “update all” and then go to the bathroom. By the time I’m back, everything is done and delivered.

I hope you’re aware of xiaomi.eu, where they host debloated, community-developed ROMs.

Oh right, I heard that especially in the US, iPhone users refuse to do anything but. I’m stuck with whatsapp since that’s what almost everybody in Europe is using. Not much better considering it’s a Meta company, but at least they have to adhere to our data privacy laws.

I use Mezo SMS, comes with a wildcard blocklist for both numbers and content.

And to be honest, I use it exclusively to block shit. Haven’t actually sent a text message in way over a decade. If it wasn’t for two websites I have to use sending me one time passwords, I’d have uninstalled the SMS app altogether.

I never played the game, but thought the show was pretty great. Maybe not being familiar with the game is key, since you have different expectations?

I think it’s a fundamental design question. Apple wants users to do everything within their ecosystem, so they internalize as many functions as possible, whereas Android was designed to be lightweight and modular. Everything you don’t absolutely need in a browser just clutters it up.

Personally I like the flexibility of using exactly the app I want for functions rather than having my OS enforce a default.

Not amazingly fast, but still quite a bit better indeed. Give it a try, to don’t need to uninstall outlook to do that after all.

The new outlook is utter garbage. It was in fact so bad that I uninstalled it and now use it through the web front-end only. And I’m doing that in Edge - as the only website this browser is allowed to open (asides from Teams, where the software is just as terrible).

If they call it a success that no more people are complaining because they just gave up, then, congrats… I guess?

Excellent. Thanks a lot!

WallpaperExport (Export the current and the default wallpaper) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.cvzi.wallpaperexport/

Free and open source. Haven’t tested it on a Pixel, but it’s just been updated last week, should work.

They can, do, and will keep doing so. Damaging projects and efforts in the process.

I can’t wait to see the site formerly known as Twitter to go out of business.

The option to download free is excellent, I wouldn’t know what price is “fair” without checking it out first. Will give it a try for a couple days and then come back with a decision (or not if I end up not liking it, who knows).

That really was a long time ago in Chinese tech terms. I happen to live there, and it’s astonishing how fast stuff evolves.